Why we need to see faith as opinion – Shield of Faith, Part 1

What is faith? There are many ways to describe faith.  Faith can be a noun, an idea, and faith can be a verb, an action.

When we think of faith as a noun, we might think of a religion.  The Christian faith.  The Muslim faith.  The Hindu faith. There are many, many religious faiths.  A religious faith is a formal institution. 

In recent years, you may have heard of the rise of the Nones.  Not nuns who are women who pledge themselves to celibacy and ministry and live in convents.  I’m talking about Nones as people who, when filling out a survey, and they come to the question that asks them “Which religious faith are you?” and they choose, “None.”  Meaning that they are not associated with any institutional religion.  In the USA more and more people in the last 20 years have been identifying themselves as None.  30% of the country. 

Though they might not have an association with an institutional religious faith, that doesn’t mean they are without faith.  So we might also think of faith, in its noun form, as a set of propositions that we agree with. In that sense, some people argue that every single person who has ever lived has faith.  Every single person believes something. 

Faith, writes the author of the epistle of Hebrews in the New Testament, “is being sure of what we hope for and certain of what we do not see.” (Hebrews 11:1)  That surety and certainty does not mean we have proof beyond the shadow of a doubt.  If we can prove it beyond the shadow of a doubt, then we no longer need to have faith.  We don’t need faith in that case, because we have proof.  So the writer of Hebrews is correct that faith is confidence in an idea, an idea that we hope for and do not currently see. 

It seems to me that every human who ever lived has at least some faith.  There are certainly people who claim that they have no faith, or that the concept of faith is impossible.  They claim that they only agree with what they see, touch, smell, hear.  But when pressed, I suspect they cannot possibly have answers for every question, and will have to admit, “I don’t know for sure.” 

For example, “Where did the universe come from?”  “I don’t know for sure,” they will have to admit.  They might have opinions, and they are certainly entitled to them.  But those opinions about, especially the big questions of life like origin, meaning, morality and destiny, must be seen as opinions. Opinion, while it might be based in evidence and some facts, ultimately cannot be proven, and thus is held by faith. 

Christians also have these kinds of opinions. For example, did Jesus rise from the dead?  As Christians we say a rousing, “Yes!”  But we are only saying that as an opinion.  We have evidence for our opinion.  Very good evidence, I would posit, such as the fact that the religious leaders who desperately wanted to shut down the early church’s claim that Jesus physically rose from the dead, simply needed to produce his body.  But they never did. Why not? We don’t know for sure, but one option is that Jesus rose from the dead.

So we have evidence.  We are trusting in the words of the Bible and in other historical sources which provide us the evidence.  But does our evidence mean that we can prove beyond the shadow of a doubt that Jesus rose from the dead?  No. We must admit that we have an opinion based on evidence, and that opinion is called faith.

Likewise, those who do not believe that Jesus rose from the dead also cannot prove their opinion beyond the shadow of a doubt.  We all must admit that our opinion is an opinion.  It takes faith!  Christians have all sorts of opinions like this.  That a Triune God exists.  That a spiritual realm exists.  That there are angels and demons.  That God took on a human body, Jesus.  That the Holy Spirit lives in us who truly believe.  That Jesus died and rose again, defeating sin, death and the devil.  These are all what we would call Articles of Faith. 

Faith Church is a part of a denomination, the Evangelical Congregational Church, which has a document called The 25 Articles of Faith.  In those 25 statements, the denomination declares what it believes, its opinions about God and his interaction with humanity. 

So far, I have been describing faith as a noun, as ideas, as opinions that we believe.  But there is so much more to faith.  In the next post we’ll continue investigating faith as a noun, and later in the week, we’ll talk about faith as a verb.

Photo by Victor Sauca on Unsplash